Ed Bilodeau

#Notice (Oct 19/05): So ends my stay here on Blogger. This morning Google implemented an anti-spam 'feature' that forces me to answer a challenge phrase when I want to post to my own blog. No notice of the change, nothing. Worse is that it doesn't even work! I type the phrase, submit, "An error occured", post deleted. Damn you, Google. Chances are I will revive my blog somewhere else, sometime soon. I'll post the new coordinates here as soon as they become available. (BTW, I'm unable to post anything to my RSS stream, so I'd appreciate it if readers could spread the word and ask people to take a look at this notice)

Update (Oct 19/05, ~noon): After a frustrating few hours (and not just trying out alternatives to Blogger), I've decided that this is a good time to take a break from all this. A day? A week? Who knows. But I need to step away from it before I pass a heavy magnet over the whole mess.

Update 2: According to this post, the reason I'm seeing the CAPTCHA (challenge phrase) is that Blogger has classified my blog as spam. Thanks. User for five years and now I'm spam. I searched the Blogger site, but there is no mention of how to get the spam flag turned off. There is also no way of contacting anyone at Blogger. Wow. Spam they say I am, so spam I must be. Maybe it is time to take a break.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

#The state of ICT in Canada: According to the Quarterly Monitor of the Canadian ICT Sector published by Stats Canada, the ICT (information and communication technology) services sector has been growing steadily since 1997. Its the equipment sector that drags things down. Unless you are in hardware, ICT looks like a solid and promising field.

On a related note, according to the Small Business Quarterly (also by Stats Canada), the majority of job growth in the past year has occured in small firms (5-19 employees) and large firms (500+ employees). I haven't drilled down to see the job growth by sector, but if we assume that the job creation stats apply to the ICT sector, it looks like IT jobs are to be found in the small shops and in the large consulting firms.

However, I remember another government report a year or so ago stating the many small and medium sized companies lacked the skills necessary to leverage their IT investments and tie them to their business strategy. I wonder if their approach to solving this problem has been to outsource the work to small and large companies?